Flock has gotten a lot of criticism lately.
The reason for this particular round of naysaying is the launch of the impressive Performancing Firefox plugin that allows extremely easy blogging, from Firefox, for Wordpress, MovableType or Blogger. Performancing is getting extremely good reviews from top bloggers like Paul Kedrosky, Om Malik and Steve Rubel.
But the attacks didn’t start with the release of Performancing. They go way back. Flock even has its own hate blog (flocksucks.wordpress.com) (although this one substitutes common cruelty for actual insight and humor).
My guess is Flock is suffering from a bit of backlash over its early hype. And my further guess is that Flock, backed by an impressive group of founders and investors, has a few massive tricks up its sleeve that will be announced (or leak out) sometime soon.
Until now Flock has done little to fuel all the hype, and have likewise refrained from responding to the criticism.
Tonight, however, Flock’s Chris Messina, supported by CEO Bart Decrem, takes issue with some of the bashing.
I like this post, and not just because Chris at one point says “jack-in-the-box assclown” or calls web surfing with Firefox extensions “Firefox and Duct tape”. Chris gives a passionate, if not entirely fact laden, speach on what the hell they are trying to accomplish over at Flock.
But no, see, that’s where Flock comes in. Or I don’t care, don’t call it Flock. Whatever you want, but that’s where the thing we’re building comes in. That’s why we exist, that’s why we matter, that’s what the point is.
Yeah, Firefox and Duct tape, it’ll help. Sure sure. It’ll get you some of the way there. But hell, when I’m talking to someone, engaged in a conversation that threatens my very existence, or that threatens to change the way I flip my omelettes, man, I do not want my mouth to fall off at the jaw because it wasn’t tested, wasn’t built right, didn’t have a million beedy eyes boring down on it while it was being fastened to my head, making sure the stupid thing would function in the real world without needing pliers or a tireiron to get it to work right.
My last post on Flock, covering its beta launch, is here.
Disclaimer: I like Flock and the Flock employees. I get excited about big ideas. And I believe Flock can be a big idea.
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Thanks Michael! Actually I think Chris’ post is less about “Enough!” and more about us trying to do a better job explaining the idea behind Flock, and how Firefox + a set of extensions is quite different then what we’re trying to do. I think part of the problem is that we’re still very early in the development cycle, and so enough of the vision doesn’t shine through in the code just yet, hence the need to explain things more clearly. But hopefully the code will start speaking for itself shortly.
Check out
http://www.alexa.com/data/deta.....ck.com#top
Flock has had nice spike in traffic when they build their PR/hype but have been unable to build on it recently.
Compare them with meebo.com (another web2.0 company though not neccessarily the same space) that you have covered in your blog. You will see that meebo is showing a very nice gradual uptick
Atul, fair enough, although I point out that the comparison isn’t a good one. For instance, Flock is a browser, not a website (although of course they have a website). I use flock, and rarely visit the home page.
Atul, Meebo is useable, up-and-running software. Flock is in technology development mode where our software isn’t useable right now. It’s an early stage open source project. People heard about the hype and checked it out. Now we’re building community and code. Before too long we’ll have useable software and then we too will start showing a nice gradual uptick.
Michael/Bart,
I agree with both your points. the comparision with unfair. I have tried out Flock and it is pretty neat.
Cheers
I was really excited for the release of Flock… but when I got it, it was just ANOTHER Firefox but lacking support for some extensions. I dropped it quickly because I couldn’t take the time to customize it to what my Firefox is already.
I don’t see why people should bash it tho… don’t like it don’t use it. I don’t use it but don’t think it sucks. I just can’t see enought reason to use it. I see it actually as annoying especially if it becomes big because it would mean that I would have 2 browsers and my work more a mess then centralized. I don’t know how the Flock team look at this.
Seemed like a solution in search of a problem to me - but hopefully I’m proven wrong!
Here’s a thing: I tried Firefox, but wasn’t that bothered with it. IE never gave me any problems, so why change? But when Flock appeared, I gave it a spin and I liked it, mostly due to the attitude of the people who are working on it. I’m still using it.
Maybe Firefox was built to regain the web from IE. Fine and laudable, but that’s a backwards-looking attitude. IE is an antique program. Why try to do the same things that IE does, only better?
Flock is being built as a browser for the new web (dare I say web 2.0?). These guys are looking forwards. They’ve got no-one to beat and nothing to prove. They’re moving ahead with their own agenda. That appeals to me.
Ironically, I had to uninstall Flock so that Performancing would.
I agree that Flock is too early in its development.
Flock definitely has something up their sleeves. They wouldn’t have the financial backing that they do if they didn’t have a superb idea brewing. They are also on a pre-Alpha 0.4 Developer build. They have a lot of potential.
Check out flock watcher — http://getanewbrowser.com/flockr.html
Performancing is a nice little add-in, and Flock is cool too. For a much more advanced blog editor, check out RocketPost:
http://www.anconia.com/rocketpost
I designed it.
Michael & Bart:
I didn’t know there was a hate group out there critizing Flock. However I’m not surprised, since we like to criticize everything, even thought its God on Earth.
Ever since Flock came out, I’ve been using it “every single day”. At first it used to crash on me; not it stopped. I don’t know why. I like its layout and sleek appearance. Everything is in its place. Nothing is cluttered or untidy. The blue color is very pleasing to the eye. As a matter of fact, I like Flock so much, I decided to unload a Flock theme to make Firefox look and feel like Flock.
We should never loose sight, that Flock is the first beta; meaning there is a lot of work to be done before it is a finished, polished product. Comparing Flock to Fireforx or Internet Explorer is like comparing Apple to Oranges. They are to two different creatures.
Things I would like Santa to give Flock is:
1. An integrated Speller. I blog a lot and need a speller badly. First, because my English sucks and second, because my typing sucks. Spellers are great to attack those two handicaps.
2. Formal Bookmarks: I use Bookmarks a lot to organize reference material for future blog posts. I don’t like the way Delicious handle & manages bookmarks.
3. More plug-ins to stream music. There are many stations that require ActiveX plug-in for Windows Media Player. I don’t see where I can download this plug-in for Flock.
As Bart clearly stated, Flock is in its early development stages and browser’s philosophy has not translated into code. But knowing the guys behind Flock we will see a lot of surprises in 2006.
Ah, one more thing. Flock is the fastest browser around. It beats all the rest rendering pages. Firefox follows shortly.
My two cents regarding Flock.
Thank you,
Omar.-
Well to me Flock just sounds like a load of people who are leeching from the popularity of firefox, adding a few hyped up proprietary extensions that they will no doubt charge for in the future.
This is why I am against the product - they could have easily contributed extensions to firefox - the reason for *not* doing this is obvious, its all about money